Beauty In The Breakdown
by Scarlet Child
Summary: Does that smile you stapled onto your face hurt yet, Cho? Oneshot.


Beauty In The Breakdown

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of its characters

Summary: Does that smile you stapled onto your face hurt yet, Cho? CedricxCho oneshot

♪♫♪ … ♪♫♪

Fog enshrouded the bland lawn of the graveyard, collecting at the bases of the jagged tombstones. Lightning flashed overhead in the hazy sky, and thunder trembled in the distance, but the company gathered there, their head's solemnly bowed, disregarded the bad weather that attempted to force them from the burial.

The priest finished his prayer, and the boy's family were the first to reach the closed coffin, their muffled sobs drowned by the patters of rain collecting on the tombstones.

Cho stood quite still, wearing a plain black dress and matching coat, her dark eyes fixed on the angel above Cedric's grave.

Despite feeling that her insides had turned to ice, and her mind was trying as best it could to concentrate on the funeral procession, her thoughts began to wonder. Her chocolate orbs eyed the angel above his grave almost cautiously.

_How paradoxical is it that he should die under the staff of a grim reaper, and be buried under the cloak of an angel._ _Almost poet, really._

A laugh died in her throat.

The pretty, Chinese girl remained glued on the spot, despite comforting whispers from her family and friends being uttered in her ear. Each kind words meant _nothing_ to her. They were all codes for 'Sorry that your boyfriend's dead.' She was _sick_ of their pity.

Another flash of lightning filled the dark sky, it's silver reflection streaking onto the angel. It illuminated her poignant face for a millisecond, and it was then that Cho realized that a chunk of marble was missing from the nose.

_I guess not even angels are perfect…_

"Cho, I'm so sorry."

She couldn't even bear to turn to face the trio. The dark-haired boy laid a hand on her shoulder for a second, his touch no more of a comfort than the knowledge that her boyfriend was dead.

As in _dead_ dead. The kind of dead that meant never coming back in any way or form.

The thought tore at Cho's heart. Sure, she could go out at anytime, put back on that happy smile of hers, retrieve her Miss Popularity status at Hogwarts and acquire another boyfriend- say, _Potter_. But what would be the point?

The party was retreating to their portkeys, out of the rain that was beginning to flood to their ankles.

"Would you look at that!" she vaguely heard her father yell to another, "It's as if someone's

cast a spell on the sky!"

She felt another hand on her shoulder; this time, her mothers. She shook it off morosely, eyes still focused on the angel's face.

"Cho darling," her mother whispered.

Cho stared fiercely ahead, ignoring her mother's tearful gaze.

Her mother eventually got the message, and left her to be alone.

Cho blinked, her tears mingling with the rain that soaked her outfit. She fell to her knees at the edge of the angel, tracing the name carved in sharp letters on the tombstone.

"Cedric," she whispered, her voice cracking in distress.

This was the moment she had been dreading, the moment that should have been spent sleeping, picturing. To stand before his grave, to see the angel watching over him, to actually _accept _that he was gone and there absolutely nothing she could about it, _killed _her.

And squinting up into the heavy rain, she sobbed on the grave of her deceased boyfriend's tomb, her head leaning despairingly on the smooth marble.

_You're pathetic Cho_, the wind whispered to her.

Or maybe it was the reminiscent echoes of the cruel teenagers at Hogwarts. Especially that Pansy Parkinson. Was there ever anyone as ruthless as that cold, heartless bitch?

She thought back to one of the last days of school, when she would force herself to get out of bed in the morning, buff her dirtied nails, and do her makeup like nothing had ever happened. Like her boyfriend wasn't murdered.

"Does that smile you stapled onto your face hurt yet, Cho?" the callous Slytherin girl would hiss in her ear as she slithered past.

Only Parkinson knew the truth about Cho.

How her life was one depressing, narcissistic lie.

On her first day of Hogwarts, it was just sheer luck that she should be spotted by a few older, popular students that would, from then on, consider her as a friend. It was only that she would occasionally be spotted with them that would give her her popular status.

She had known Cedric for a long time. Except she didn't really know him. They were acquaintances and occasional herbology partners, but she had never worked up the nerve to admit her feelings to him. She had never dreamed that he had harbored a crush on her for a long time, as he had admitted to her on the eve of the Yule Ball. And she had never dreamed that he would perish soon after she realized how much she genuinely loved him.

"Did you think of me before you died, Ced?" she whispered to the angel, "Did I mean as much to you as you did to me?"

She closed her eyes, and soon after, drifted into peaceful slumber on the edge of the angel.

She wouldn't go back to school and put on the same masquerade that she had fooled everyone with for the past five years.

In fact, she wouldn't go back at all.

Because some part of her realized that life without the boy she loved wasn't worth living.

♪♫♪ … ♪♫♪


End file.
